Eat Your Vegetables?
     When I was young my mother would suggest that I eat my vegetables. To a casual observer it might have sounded like a suggestion, but when Mom suggested, I knew it was best to eat my vegetables. Of course every time she would explain that it was either good for my body, or at the very least, it was good for developing my character. (That is, doing something I rather not do just because it was the right thing to do.)
     But boy, was she every behind the curve on the nutrition thing.
     Now it has to be the right kinds of vegetables and I need to eat seven servings of them each day.
     Let's not forget the fruits, and again some are much better for me than others, and I need six servings of these good fruits each day.
     Then there are proteins, the right kind of carbs, fats, and the list goes on until it fades into the distance.
     Today a person is deluged with nutritional information. For instance:
     Chocolate is now good for you, as long as it's dark enough.
     Coffee is good for you, especially if you want to stay alert enough to keep up with all the new nutritional information.
     The blueberry is a super food, but you need two cups of the things each day, even if you have to import them from Chile and they taste like---well---terrible.
     And without  your six almonds a day, you can probably expect a heart attack before bedtime.
     The latest one I've heard about is vinegar, which is evidently helpful if you're trying to lose weight. The announcement was not explicit on whether you took it internally or rubbed it on your body.  However, the fact that they did point out that vinegar would tend to corrode your teeth led me to believe that drinking it was the intended method of application.
     Maybe the loss of your teeth is how you lose the weight.
     Each one of these nutritional assertions is of course, substantiated by a 'study', but there is rarely any information on the parameters of these studies.
     A study might have been three people in Norway who only ate fish for three days straight and lost weight, had a drop in blood pressure, and had a drop  in their glucose levels, which then became the basis for their claim that eating fish will cure your diabetes, your high blood pressure, and help you lose weight. And all you have to do is buy a bottle of their fish pills, or some such.
     Then again the study might have been conducted in a scientifically approved manner in a legitimate effort to prove or disprove some particular point.
    One problem with this plethora of information is that very seldom do two studies agree, or the facts from any given study remain the 'latest information' for very long.
     So the end result is that if a person cares about maximum nutrition you're always in a state of frustrated uncertainty. Knowing that what you're eating is almost certainly not quite the right thing, or the right amount, or at the right time.
     If I would eat the daily recommended servings of everything that I need every day, I would not have enough time to do anything else, plus I'd be as big as a blimp.
     Personally, I think that enjoying what you eat in moderation and being thankful for what you have, will do more for your health than the micromanagement of your diet ever will.